The Nigerian Communications Commission, -NCC, has advised organizations to inculcate stronger cybersecurity measures to avoid ransomware attacks on their corporate network. Ransomware is malicious software or malware that prevents one from accessing his/her computer files, systems, or networks and orders you to pay a ransom for their return.
At present, the NCC computer security incident response team, -CSIRT, had advised that to prevent this form of attack, organizations had to make sure their employees used strong passwords, enable multi-factor authentication, and backed up their regular systems.
The advisory was issued after hackers using the Yanluowang ransomware, allegedly gained access to Cisco’s network with an employee’s stolen credentials after hijacking the personnel’s Google account containing credentials synced from their browser.
“The NCC-CSIRT calculated that the potential damage from the incident to be harmful, and there have been predictions that successful exploitation of the ransomware will result in ransomware deployment to compromise computer systems, sensitive products, and consumers’ data theft and exposure,” the statement had declared.
“It could also result in huge financial loss to organizations by incurring significant indirect costs and could also mar their reputations.” It added.
“The first step to preventing ransomware attacks is to ensure that employees are using strong, unique passwords for every account and enabling multi-factor authentication wherever possible.” The statement finished.
